USA for Africa Delays Decision on Its Future Activities Until Fall

The USA for Africa Foundation now has a Wells Fargo Bank vice president as a financial adviser and a four-person steering committee but reached no decision regarding what--if anything--it will do as an encore to Hands Across America.

An all-day board meeting Tuesday, the foundation’s first since the May 25 mega-event, was “far and away the most productive and the longest board meeting we’ve ever had,” said Ken Kragen, foundation president.

Wells Fargo Vice President Karimu Johnson was added to a board of directors that also includes singers Harry Belafonte, Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Marlon Jackson and Michael Jackson.

The board also approved a list of 36 people who will be asked to create a domestic task force, advising the foundation how to spend the $15 million to $20 million netted from Hands Across America.

But the question of what the creators of “We Are the World” and Hands Across America will do next won’t be answered until fall.

Kragen said the board approved formation of a subcommittee to draft USA for Africa plan. The plan will include a recommendation on what political role the nonprofit foundation should play.

Kragen and Marty Rogol, the foundation’s executive director, say Hands Across America deserves credit for bringing about current federal anti-poverty bills worth more than $5 billion in aid to the homeless and hungry.

“I have to believe that the legislation would not have been introduced without the event,” Kragen said.

But Kragen and Rogol stop short of saying USA for Africa is a political lobby. Like the question of what mega- or mini-events USA for Africa might stage next, the foundation’s political policy won’t be defined until the steering committee delivers its report to the board, Kragen said.

The committee consists of Kragen, Rogol, medical adviser Dr. Irwin Redliner and Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, an African-advocacy organization prominent in the anti-apartheid movement.